Welcome to Xargon Uncharted Isle. This is a full game mod of Xargon Beyond Reality for DOS. Extensive effort and attention to detail has gone into this mod. In addition to six all new levels, the mod contains new menus, new story scenes, a new demo recording and an all new Adlib CMF soundtrack with influence from the original Xargon music by Dan Froehlich. It is essentially a new unofficial mini-episode of Xargon!

The mod was prepared with many of the original tools and techniques used to create the original game. All levels and menus were created with the official Xargon editor used by Allen Pilgrim in the 1990s to make the original game. The new soundtrack was composed using Adlib Visual Composer, a DOS music program from 1987 that was also used by Dan Froehlich to create the original soundtrack. Hex editing the Xargon executable also enabled changes to various in-game text that would otherwise require editing and recompiling the source code.

Why does this mod exist? Xargon deserves it! Many other classic games from the same time as Xargon, such as Doom, Commander Keen, the Duke Nukem games and Jill of the Jungle have received unofficial mods, fangames, sequels and fan-made levels over the years, and Xargon seems to be a little neglected in this space. With Allen’s release of the Xargon editor in 2024, the possibility of a substantial mod along these lines was opened up and I wanted to see if it could be done.

It has been an interesting challenge to learn the ins and outs of the original editor tool and try to use it to see how close someone can come to using it to make a new episode of the game. Go and have a play through and let me know what you think!